What Happened to Etiquette at the Movies?
Weekday afternoon matinees is the only way to avoid that crap! It’s always just me and a couple of octogenarians. Bliss!
I agree completely! I love going to the movies some random weekday. Sometimes, though, I really just wanna see a movie opening night and am astounded by how rude some people can be.
What I do find amusing, however, is how many people become critics during the previews. All around me I can hear people giving their opinions; I almost find it cute…until it continues DURING THE ACTUAL FILM. Then I just get mad.
^^That’s how I saw Eastern Promises and let me tell you, if anybody “got” that movie, those octogenarians did. They were absorbed throughout. Good times.
—PolarisDiB
Claus said:
“The problem is that, much like with other things that used to be considered normal, privacy is being marketed these days as something only criminals want.”
This is one of the most on-point comments I have read on this forum.
The irony being, many people on Facebook and with cell phones complain about an invasion of privacy. But they won’t let people enjoy a film in the cinema. Their so-called conveniences upset everyone else and actually expose them to strangers.
JOSH:
No, if someone texts you in the cinema, you do NOT text them back! Why? Because I CAN see you out the corner of my eye and you ARE distracting! Few things in the cinema are worse than someone thumb wrestling with all 26 letters of the Roman alphabet on their little keypad when Clint Eastwood is about to plunk some nogoodnik on the silver screen.
You can’t wait to text them…not even an hour or so until the film ends? The text will still be there, and if anyone gets upset at you, hey, you were in a film, so bad luck for the person sending you the text. And “minimum” glow on a phone is STILL painfully luminous inside a darkened room—and still a sign of contempt to those folks who actually paid 14 clams to enjoy a MOVIE, not the Phone Texting Olympics.
I don’t have children nor a mobile telephone. If your lifestyle is not suited to observing the simple rules of “cinemetiquette”, change your habits. Please do not ruin it for everyone else.
By the way, I had these three doofuses in front of me yammering during “Easy Rider” the other day…who the HELL talks at great length during “Easy Rider” at the cinema?
Maybe a better question is “What Happened To Etiquette?” It’s not just the picture palace where manners seem in short supply.
Yeah, I don’t understand that one Josh. If you can see your phone well enough to read a text message and text back, then so can everyone sitting around you. It IS annoying and it amazes me how many people think it isn’t.
I love to eat ice cream at the cinema. It’s the perfect nice quiet food. Not at all distracting. But imagine my surprise the other day when upon ordering a nice tub of Blueberry cheesecake ice cream I discovered they’d gotten ambitious and added that wonderful staple of the Japanese dessert, cornflakes!
I was trying desperately to work out how to eat the dam thing quietly when I got to my seat and realized I had the whole place to myself.
Chinese movie (If You Are the One), early afternoon show, tub of ice cream and no phones, children, chattering student, snoring old men or people laughing loudly to let you know they understand. Perfect!
Here are some potential causes for the increasing loss of civility in movie theaters:
1. Television (people become used to talking during screened entertainment)
2. Arriving late (latecomers invariably have to discuss something, even if only the selection of their seats)
3. Commercials shown on movie screens before the feature (making the experience seem more like TV, as noted in #1) By the way, when I lived in L.A., when commercials were first introduced, the audiences would BOO them off the screen and they were eliminated—at least for a while
4. Extremely long trailer period before the feature, causing people to be bored and acclimating them to not paying full attention to what’s on the screen
5. Inadequate warnings on screen about not talking, turning off cellphones, etc.
6. The warnings noted in #5 often come before the long series of trailers noted in #4, so they can be forgotten or ignored entirely by those who arrive late, as noted in #2
7. Theaters showing a time-consuming series of commercials and trailers before the feature, which causes some audience members to get bored, so they end up talking or checking their Blackberries, etc.
8. General rudeness in the culture
I’ve shushed several people who persisted in talking once a movie has started and they often reply that I’m somehow rude for calling attention to their rudeness, or they claim that “It’s just the credits” or some other flimsy excuse. At times, I’ve ruined my own experience by running out to contact the manager to scold the miscreants.
^ I’ve gotten quite used to running out to talk to the manager, but usually because the picture is out of focus or a fourth of the image is projected onto the ceiling or something.
Sorry. No more pointless youtube clips. But for some reason Larry David and Sienfeld were really good at capturing the politics of theater going (and we could not help but share). Sienfeld, especially, has some great moments in the cinema.
To respond to the reason why, I think the simplest answer is the best: people are rude. Why people are rude is an altogether different story. We went to the movies with another couple and they left all their garbage on the seat. When we asked if they were going to pick it up, they said “why?’” in a completely innocent and naive way, with absolutely no malice, but as if they really did not understand the concept of picking up your own trash.
I (Joe) usually have a hard time asking people to be quiet (kind of makes me feel like a nerd), but Karen does not. Which puts Joe in awkward positions when the lights come on and the five or six people that Karen had a shouting match with happen to be first string D-II offensive linemen.
Thats why you should follow this protocol before you completely berate someone:
1st step-half turn of head (located towards the perpetrators)
2nd step- full turn of head and eye roll
3rd step- polite cough
4th step- step 1-3 all at once
5th step- low murmur
6th step- loud murmur
7th step- “will the person talking please be quiet”
8th step- variations of step 7 but more aggressive
9th step- and this only in extreme circumstance—retrieve a theater employee
Whatever you do, do not stab someone with a meat thermometer.
I’ve been lucky to not had too many people being rude during my theater-going experiences as of late. I do find it mildly appalling, though, when a group of 5-6 adults brought in a two-year-old while they watched Watchmen. I guess that could count for rudeness in my book, on the adults’ part. The kid didn’t make hardly any noise during that movie! I guess they were traumatized or something…..anyway, they were quiet.
If people are talking in the movies it’s because the director didn’t do his or her job to make the audience shut the fuck up and pay attention and EXPERIENCE the genius on screen!
I had an awful experience during a Watchmen screening. I sat next to this man who ate a large bag of popcorn quickly, and then spent the rest of the film clearing his mouth out of the excess kernels. The nosies this guy made were so irritating and disgusting. It completely killed the viewing. Frank, you bring up an excellent point. The line between a home theater and a movie theater has blurred, and people have become abnormally comfortable being obnoxious, making noises, talking, and just being rude.
McNulty, I’ve had people talk in a disruptive manner around me in some rather good movies. It’s not the director’s job to belt some good old-fashioned manners into some ingrates who have no common courtesy.
The consumption of popcorn and potato chips is acceptable, especially if it is what is known as a “popcorn movie”.
What I find REALLY annoying is when people use silent moments in the movie as an excuse to make excessive noise and start loud conversations. You know, the whole “there’s not dialogue or music so I can just talk all I want as loudly as I feel is appropriate” mindset.
No, no and NO! When there is a silent moment in a film, I want to feel the silence. That’s why it’s there: to establish a mood, to perhaps build tension or suspense. People talking aloud like they’re at a restaurant strips away the power of that silence. In fact, I’d prefer people talk in a loud action sequence than disrupt the quiet moments of a film.
I blame the amount of trailers they show these days.
They have commericals playing when you come in a half hour early. It is like being at home watching tv.
When I was a kid, the curtian would be covering the screen and it would open only when the movie was about to start.
Everyone talked but once the lights when down and the curtain opened we shut up.
Movies tho are still quiet compared to what is going on iwith the noise level in libraries sometimes I think I would have better luck reading or studying at a matinee.
silence is a luxury… like bucket and tiered seating, gourmet popcorn, and color. any expectancy other than that is just down-right silly. get with the times and stop crying.
…and rudeness is a perspective only people with seizures can accommodate.
I think when people pay in advance of £8 for a cinema ticket (£15+ in London) they’re more than entitled to vent when some idiots spend the whole time talking.
Talking in a movie theater is like playing loud music at 2 AM when you’ve got somebody right across the wall trying to sleep.
(I call my neighbors the ‘Inconsiderate brigade’).
Always been like that-
Growing up in the 70s I remember when people smoked during shows, even grass.
Back in the early 80s Harlan Ellison wrote a memoir of attending NYC 42 street Grindhouse all night screenings. At a screening of Save The Tiger a patron srted to heckle the movie for beign boring. A guy just threw him over the balcony.
My original post on this thread (11 months ago) provided some guesses about why cinema etiquette had changed or disappeared.
Since the discussion has been resuscitated and we’re now talking about actual physical violence and not just rudeness, I have to add a story similar to Francisco Torres’s quote from Harlan Ellison.
The incident I witnessed (1970s) also took place in a 42nd St. theater but it was playing Kurosawa’s THRONE OF BLOOD. In the final scene, as Teshiro Mifune was being struck by hundreds of arrows while reciting soliloquies, someone in the audience found this climax rather ludicrous and started laughing out loud (VERY loud), thus ruining the picture for everyone else. A meek-looking man in the same row as the laugher finally said, “Would you mind keeping quiet?” and the laugher stood up (he was about 6 feet, 4 inches tall and muscular), walked over to the meek guy, and proceeded to pummel him unmercifully. “No one tells me to shut up!” he shouted, all the while beating the other gentleman to a bloody pulp before our eyes. (I was trapped in a crowded row or I might have tried to help.)
The incident is ironic because THRONE OF BLOOD (based on MACBETH) is about the evils of excessive violence but at least one viewer seemed to have missed that message.
^Wow.
There was a news story recently about a woman being blinded in one eye after having bleach thrown in her face during a post-film meal subsequent to complaining about a group of noisy youths and getting them ejected. So now I pick my fights very carefully when it comes to poorly behaved cinema-goers. The question I always ask myself is “do they seem reasonable?”. If the answer is “yes” then I try to reason with them, if “no” then I do my best to grin and bear it. I value my eyes too much to transgress this self-imposed rule.
I think for bad films, the excuse we have would be MST3K. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t talk through the entirety of Cowboys and Aliens, mocking it incessantly. It’s the only way to enjoy a film that bad.
double post
Shame has gone out of style. No longer are people embarrassed by their ignorance and stupidity. It’s cool to be a jerk these days.
PolarisDiB
Ahem
Cellphones…
Urinary tracts…
Babies…
Same solution: leave the auditorium once they act up. The rest of us want no part of it.
Remember your CUBS.
—PolarisDiB